On woodworking: Why we can't have everything we want
A player on the official forums asked what the new woodworking profession would be like, how gathering wood would work, and so on.
If it had been me I'd have asked, "How much wood could a woodworker work if a woodworker could work wood?" and "Where would a wannabe woodworker who would work with wood find wood with which to work the woodworker's wood work?" But I digress.
Nethaera was kind enough to pop in and basically tell us that we were getting ahead of ourselves again, and imply that woodworking probably wouldn't work in this expansion.
"But why just one profession per expansion?" you ask? Got profession fever have you?
Well Nethaera responds to this as well:
We're never short on ideas. We have many that we would like to implement, but implementing them isn't always such a simple task.
For a new profession you need to consider:
How it will work?
Where will the recipes come from and where in the world will they be placed?
Who will the trainers be and what is their story?
What recipes are necessary and what materials are required for them?
What exactly will be the result of the profession as far as stat changes and enhancements be?
What art assets are going to be needed?
What technology will support it on the back end?
Why will people want it?
Is it ultimately fun and interesting?
And many more things. Then in the end, it must balance out with the rest of the game as well as with other professions. Combine that with all the other things we are working on for Wrath of the Lich King and it isn't something we can just toss together overnight.
So there it is, as usual: this whole "game development" thing can be a lot more complex than it seems, and consequently we players can't always have as much new stuff as we might want. Still, woodworking is in those Blizzard offices somewhere, percolating through the developers' brains -- so maybe one day we might actually get to work with the wood we've always wanted.
Nathaera said:
